1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to the field of data processing systems. More particularly, this invention relates to mechanisms for banning from use computer programs that may be executed on data processing systems.
2. Description of the Prior Art
As computer systems and networks become larger, more complex and more critical to the operation of many businesses and institutions, there exists a need to control the computer programs that may be executed on those systems. Generally speaking, there will be a core set of computer programs that are properly intended for execution on a computer system. An individual user may add to this set further computer programs specific to their needs or requirements. There also exists a category of computer programs that it is desired to ban from use on a computer system. Examples of such programs are games and programs that can consume excessive resources, such as data streaming programs.
Whilst it is desirable to provide mechanisms that can enforce the banning of certain computer programs, it is advantageous if these mechanisms do not themselves represent a significant additional overhead in terms of installation, maintenance and consumption of processing resources. To this end, it has been proposed that banned computer programs could be treated as if they were computer viruses and the mechanisms that are already in place upon many computer systems to combat computer viruses be used to enforce the banning undesired, although not actually virus-like, computer programs. Whilst such an approach is superficially attractive as it could effectively prevent execution of unwanted computer programs without requiring an addition system and without consuming significant additional processing resources, it has the disadvantage that there is no universally accepted view of which computer programs should be banned from use. In some organizations, it may be entirely acceptable for games to be executed on computer systems, whilst in other organizations this may be strictly prohibited. Accordingly, the anti-virus computer system provider would need to produce a wide set of banned computer program definition data such that individual users could pick the appropriate definition data to ban their particular set of unwanted computer programs. This would represent an impractical additional overhead on the anti computer virus system provider as a very large number of different banned program definition files would be required. Furthermore, it is undesirable for the anti-computer virus program provider to become involved in deciding which computer programs are potentially of a sort that a user may wish to ban.